Online tool helps UK communities track carbon

Starting today, communities across the UK will be able to use an award-winning online tool to help them measure their carbon emissions.

The tool, developed by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA), was previously available only to communities in the East of England via the Cut your Carbon campaign Website. However, it is now available to all areas of Britain as part of the Energy Saving Trust Green Communities service.

The online tool offers a way for groups of individuals to measure their collective carbon emissions through individual carbon footprinting. Once communities become active, they can get recommendations for energy saving actions and can also track their progress over time.

According to the Energy Saving Trust, rolling this tool out nationally will empower people across the country to cut their carbon emissions effectively and will help the UK to meet its target of reducing CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

“The community carbon footprint tool is an important and innovative solution to help support communities to reduce their carbon footprint and the Energy Saving Trust is very happy for the opportunity to work in partnership with EEDA on this,” said Vicky East, communities assistant manager at the Energy Saving Trust. “EEDA have successfully supported a number of communities to understand and effectively reduce their carbon footprint. We hope that by promoting and further developing the carbon footprint tool that we can build on EEDA’s good work and help an even greater number of communities throughout the UK to take action on climate change.”

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations awarded the online tool a gold award for being the best Website in the East of England in 2008.

The system was developed with a regional software developer, Solstice Associates, based in Hadleigh, ,who are experts in this area of measuring carbon emissions.

While the Cut your Carbon programme will end in March 2010 due to increased pressure on EEDA’s limited budgets, the online tool will remain in place on the campaign Website for the time being and communities will be able to move over to the Energy Saving Trust system in due course.